Quote:
Originally Posted by jason taylor
Is being undead that much more of a force-multiplier without horses or armor?
Besides the living commoners will help the nobility when this happens, no matter what ancestors the zombies had in their earthly lifes. Rent collectors are less obnoxious then monsters.
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It is that much of a force multiplier. Armies in the field are limited by their need to forage and carry along supplies. Food is the most important military consideration, in attack or defence.
Undead don't need to eat, rest or do anything but single-mindedly focus on the destruction of the living. Hence, even at a shambling pace, their strategic mobility is staggering, because they can walk all night and day.
Granted, an invasion of undead without any direction or guiding intelligence will be more in the nature of a natural disaster, i.e. a plague of locusts saying braiiiins. Still, it will probably kill enough peasants and cause enough panic to make the next harvest hard to gather. Instant famine.
If there's a dark and malevolent intelligence behind the undead horde, things are desperate indeed. Instead of famine being an accidental byproduct, expect the undead to
deliberately avoid the knights and their retainers, prefering instead to scour the countryside and poison wells, kill farmers, slaughter livestock, etc. Basically, make it impossible for living men to survive in the land.
And since even a slow undead can march at Move 1 all day and night, which translates into 48 miles per day in reasonable terrain, the human armies are basically powerless to intercept and stop them. They'll be moving at 10-15 miles per day, if they go in force, and if they try to send smaller flying columns to try to keep up with the undead, the strategically mobile undead can converge on those small units and destroy them.
Sure, the castles of the king and his nobles will remain defensible. But how much does that matter when everyone who can't find refuge there is being killed and the food supplies there will be the last food people see?